Murder, My Love

Chapter Eight

Even before Rosemary’s Baby and John Lennon were shot there, the gothic, nineteenth-century Dakota Building on the Upper West Side looked like something out of a horror show, the kind of monstrosity of a mansion you walked to on a rain-swept dark night when your car broke down and you had no other option. The same was true in the afternoon.

Rumor had it that ghosts, including the late Beatle’s, turned up frequently at 72nd Street and Central Park West, but it was better known as a haunt of the rich and famous who were mostly still with us. Lauren Bacall and Leonard Bernstein lived here (not together) and so once had Lillian Gish and Boris Karloff (also not bunkmates). Current residents included Joe Namath, Roberta Flack, and Rudolf Nureyev. Plenty of others, just as rich and famous, had been turned down by the notoriously picky co-op board.

I couldn’t have gotten in even on a temporary basis, if I hadn’t been expected by a tenant. A cab dropped me at the arched main entry, designed to accommodate horse-drawn carriages. Past the uniformed doorman, in the courtyard of the looming square-shaped building, I took an elevator in the nearest corner and went up to the seventh floor. Surrounded by dark, gloomy woodwork, I made my way to residence 72 and pushed the buzzer.

The door was answered by a guy who was maybe thirty, around five eleven, in a stylish gray suit and a black t-shirt whose athletic build didn’t need those shoulder pads, unless a round of touch football was in the offing. As handsome as a guy in a Ralph Lauren ad, his chin dimpled, his complexion olive, he wore his black hair fairly long and slicked back. But his most distinguishing feature was a flattened nose that indicated somewhere in his past — collegiate probably — there had been boxing.

“Mike Hammer,” I said, “for Nicole Winters. I’m expected.”

He nodded politely, said, “Yes, Mr. Hammer,” and stepped aside, gesturing me in. He took my hat and coat and hung them in a closet, then led the way down a long entry corridor.

He glanced back. “I’m Andrew Morrow, Ms. Winters’ secretary.” His voice was mellow and mid-pitched. He glanced back with a smile, adding, “Actually, I work for the Nicole Vankemp Foundation.”

“The umbrella for her various charitable endeavors, I assume.”

“That’s right, Mr. Hammer.”

We entered into a sun-streaming, airy, ivory-drenched loft-like endless living room with a wet bar, a white baby grand piano, and a twelve-foot ceiling, easy. The sidewall was mirrored, like a ballet studio, making the impressive space seem even more vast, the floor’s oak sanded to a near bone, the whiteness of the room offset slightly by carved mahogany. At the far and near end of the staggering space were fireplaces original to the room, their fancy woodwork washed white, and over their respective mantels hung big-framed images — a blue-dominated Marilyn by Warhol and a Roy Lichtenstein comic-book panel of a redheaded woman talking into a phone.

The result was a vintage area turned modern, the furnishings metallic with colorful pop-art cushions, red, blue, yellow, green. On the red-cushioned couch, before a glass-and-steel coffee table between her and the tall windows onto the park, sat Nicole in an emerald jumpsuit. The redheaded beauty was leaning forward, leafing through oversize photographs of nightclub interiors.

She glanced up at me with a smile, her lipstick a shade similar to her hair, which was ponytailed back. With no preamble, she said, “I’m just looking over some venues in Miami. We’re doing a cancer fund-raiser down there in a few months.”

“For or against?”

That stopped her for a moment, then she laughed and it had a nice musical quality. “You’re a very bad man, Mike.”

“So I hear.”

The male secretary was at my side and Nicole looked up at us and nodded toward him. “I see you’ve met Andrew — my majordomo.”

“We’ve met.” I threw him a smile. “What does a majordomo do in this day and age?”

Andrew frowned a little, wondering if he should answer. Nicole relieved him of the chore.

“Well, right now,” she said, and gestured to a spiral pad on the glass coffee-table top, just to one side of the nightclub photos, “he’s been taking dictation. Something like a dozen letters today — people wanting help, people wanting money.” She shrugged. “We do what we can.”

Andrew collected his spiral pad and said to her, “Would you like me to run those errands now, Ms. Winters?”

“Yes, would you please, Andrew?” she asked brightly.

He gave her a half-bow, then smiled tightly and gave me a quarter of one. He went back the way we’d come. I heard a closet door open, and the sound of him climbing into a topcoat, then the front door opened and closed.

She patted the cushion next to her. “Alone at last.”

I sat. “What sort of errands?”

She flipped a hand. “Oh, banking. Arranging for us to have flowers at an event coming up. A banquet at the Waldorf with details that need tending. A hundred things.”

“He doesn’t look it.”

“Look what?”

“Gay.”

The musical laugh again. “Well, he’s not. He’s quite hetero. Not that you can tell just looking at a person.” She shook her head and the ponytail swung. “What an amusingly Cro-Magnon way of looking at things you have, Mike.”

“Is that what I have? Frankly, with that boxer’s nose and fullback’s build, I figured he might be security.”

She nodded. “Well, actually to a degree he is. Andrew wears several hats, Mike, and I don’t mean fedoras. He handles much of the actual work that my foundation requires, and he acts as our in-house security. Also, he’s a sort of bodyguard who goes almost everywhere with me.”

“He’s live-in, then?”

“Yes. This is a sizeable condo, Mike. Front to back, this living room space alone is 3,500 feet. Andrew has a room off the kitchen, and comes and goes through the service entrance. Are you wondering if he’s also my boy toy?”

I grinned at her. “I hadn’t got that far. But it might be convenient having that in-house, too.”

She pursed her lips in a wry smile and patted my leg. “I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mike, but my husband takes care of that kind of thing around here when I’m so inclined, or is that reclined? The open arrangement Jamie and I’ve enjoyed these last few years doesn’t preclude enjoying each other as well... Would you like a drink? Your usual?”

She knew what my usual was, too, even if this was my first time here.

“No, I had a late lunch,” I said, “and it included three cocktails.”

“That’s right. Jamie said you were at 21, meeting with the ex-governor.” The ponytail swung again. “What a surprise that was! That stuffy old goat, a blackmailer! Still waters do run deep.”

“How do you think your husband will take having to give up his presidential bid?”

Her eyebrows went up and down. “Oh, he’ll take it hard. But I’m not so sure waiting till he’s a little older, and has been in office a while, isn’t such a bad thing... Nothing I can get you?”

I shrugged. “If you have coffee, I’d take it.”

“I could use some myself. Black, I assume?”

“No. Cream and sugar. I like it sweet.”

“I bet you do.” She got up and padded off, the emerald jumpsuit designed to be loose on the legs but to hug her bottom, which was worth hugging. Her feet were bare.

While she was gone — fetching coffee in this place was like going on safari — I got up, skirted the glass-and-steel table and went over to the many windows onto the world. And the world was mostly Central Park.

Autumn had set the park on fire with orange and red, a dazzling display of shades and shimmer as wind riffled through. Here, in the midst of a town that had so much ugliness in it, was the beauty of nature, a reminder of what this hunk of real estate had been before we screwed the Indians out of it. Of course if you walked through all that nature at night, you could still get scalped. Ugliness likes to conceal itself in beauty.

Nicole returned with a little deco silver service with two cups, a coffee pot, matching sugar bowl and lidded creamer. This she set on the glass-top table and poured herself a cup and then me.

“I didn’t want to guess,” she said, indicating the sugar and cream.

I fixed up my own cup, not sparing either of the add-ons, and she smiled and said, “You are a sissy.”

“Flaming,” I said, and sipped. Perfect.

She leaned back and did some sipping herself. Put her bare feet and their orange-red toenails on the glass table-top. She was looking out toward the park and its fall colors, or so I thought — really she was dipping into her thoughts.

“Andrew is a special young man,” she said, musingly. “He was a good friend of my late brother’s. David? Davie was a troubled soul, I’m afraid.” She swallowed. “He was driving when...”

I’d read about it in the papers, several years ago, but nothing had brought it to mind in these circumstances till now. “Your brother had several drunk driving arrests, I recall. Didn’t have a license when he crashed.”

She frowned over at me. I guess I sounded callous.

“Andrew was in the car with him,” she said in a measured way. “He was badly injured, a broken leg, broken arm. Needed some facial reconstruction. We took care of him. Now he takes care of us.”

“Was he in college with your brother?”

She sipped coffee, nodded. “They were at Cornell. David was studying law, Andrew business. After David’s death, Andrew finished up and we hired him.”

“A security man with those kinds of injuries?”

Nicole waved that off. “Oh, Andrew is one hundred percent. He was an absolute star at physical therapy.” She shrugged. “He was a boxing champ at Cornell. On scholarship.”

“Doesn’t come from your kind of background, though.”

“No.” She gave me half a smile; it was prettier than most women’s whole ones. “Do I strike you as a snob, Mike?”

I shook my head. “No. I know you’ve had your share of tragedy. I read the papers. Your mother committed suicide when you were small. You have a sister in Europe who I gather you haven’t spoken to in years. Your father died fairly young. Being heir to a fortune doesn’t buy anybody out of misfortune.”

“Not a snob, then.”

“Not that I can tell. I did describe you as a spoiled brat to our ex-governor, though.”

She beamed. “Ha! I suppose that’s right. How can anyone swimming in my kind of money be anything else?”

“Well, at least you haven’t drowned in it.” I shrugged. “You get points for trying to use your wealth, your fame, for good.”

Nicole looked at me searchingly, as if there might be sarcasm or irony or judgment in my words. She couldn’t find any because there weren’t any to find.

Very quietly, she said, “Thank you, Mike.”

She placed her coffee cup on the glass table-top. She sat back, tucked her legs under her, arms winged out along the couch cushions behind her. The hair and lipstick and painted toenails seemed almost too perfectly matched. Was she really a redhead, or was that just another fashion statement?

I drank my coffee. “Nice little pad. These studio apartments are great.”

That amused her. “Used to be Judy Garland’s place. Yoko Ono lives next door. I can hear her making music through the walls.”

“The management ought to give you a discount.”

That amused her, too, but then she leaned toward me and said, “So... do you have it with you?”

“Yup.”

Her eyes glittered like a kid on Christmas morning contemplating a real haul. “Do I need to round up a cassette player?”

“No. I stopped by my office and picked up one of ours, in case you wanted to check it.” I dug in my pocket for the small metal tape player, the cassette already in it. “Would you like me to leave this for you?”

She was looking at the little metal-case tape player that filled the palm of my hand. “No. I want to hear.”

I held up the gadget between my thumb and middle finger. “I haven’t listened to it myself. I didn’t think that was my place. So if this turns out to be the ex-governor’s voice telling us all to take a flying leap, I can’t be held responsible.”

“Understood. I want to hear.” Her eyes still had a strange sparkle and she was smiling. Anticipating.

That struck me as damn odd, but I put the tape player on the glass table-top and punched PLAY. It began in the middle of things.

“There,” Lisa Long’s voice said. “Right there! Oh! Oh!.. Ooooooh!.. That’s so good... You’re so good...”

A rustle of clothing. A zipper. More cloth rustle.

Now came the senator’s voice: “My God... oh my God... baby, that is sooooo sweet... deeper...deeper!”

I said to Nicole, “Why don’t I fast-forward, and make sure that—”

“No!” She gripped my wrist as my hand reached out. “No, Mike... Let it play.”

She was listening intently, her breath coming fast.

So I just sat there, as the sounds of foreplay melded into lovemaking, interrupted only by further rustles of clothing being removed. The screak of flesh rubbing rhythmically against leather and the squeak of cushions defined the co-starring presence of the couch in that inner office. Moans of delight and ever-heavier breathing, male and female, built into the expected grunts and gasps, and finally the female cry of, “You’re going to make me... you’re going to make me! Give it to me! Yes! Yes!”

I admit it. I was embarrassed. You might think it would have been exciting, but I was only ill at ease, sitting next to a woman whose husband was making passionate love to another woman. Even if they did have an open marriage, it unsettled me. Something like guilt... no, not something like guilt, but guilt itself... flooded through me as I thought of how often in our own “open” days I had taken advantage of Velda’s willingness to put up with my randy damn nature and wild-oats-sowing ways and wait until I was ready to commit to her entirely.

Then something happened that challenged all those noble yet shabby thoughts.

The tape shut itself off after perhaps a minute of nothing at all. The beautiful woman next to me was sitting with her head back, her eyes lidded, her breath slow and heavy now.

“That’s the original,” I said, in a business-like way, “if the governor is to be believed. And I do believe him.”

She just looked at me. It was the look a lioness gives a cornered wild hog. She walked around the sofa, slow, graceful, almost purring, and planted herself a few yards away. I craned to look at her. What the hell...?

She stood with her legs apart, like the statue of an Amazon goddess. The emerald jumpsuit had a zipper from the throat to the waist. She used it. Slowly. The sound of the zipper inching its way down was like a growl. Then her hands simultaneously found the shoulders of the garment and she let it down to bunch around her waist. Her full breasts had large pale, pink nipples, the aureoles blending in with her lightly freckled flesh. No tanning bed for her. No sunning on vacation. She reached behind her, her breasts staying full as they rose, and undid her ponytail and let her hair loose, like a horse shaking its mane. Then she stood straight, legs together now, as her hands tugged down the rest of the garment and she stepped out of the emerald pile of cloth, kicked it away with an orange-red-nailed foot, then resumed her legs-apart stance as a goddess of Everything Woman.

She was a real redhead all right.

That was as fiery a bush as anything autumn in Central Park had to offer. The mirrored wall behind her revealed a bottom full and rounded and dimpled, as creamy as the cream in my coffee.

Her arms reached out, her smile a summoning sneer, her fingers of both her hands curling toward me in invitation.

In command.

I got up and came around the couch to her. She smiled as she saw what she had done to me.

I went to her and she pressed herself to me. My right hand found the slope of her back and followed it down as it dipped then rose into full supple smoothness. My other hand cupped one full breast, the nipple taut now. Then her face moved toward mine, lips wet and parted.

I kissed the tip of her nose and backed away.

“You’re about ten years too late, honey,” I said.

She came forward fast and her arms hugged me and one leg came around and locked me to her. “You heard what he was doing to her on that tape. I want to get even! Isn’t that what Mike Hammer does? Get even?”

“Doll, nobody ever said Mike Hammer screwed a client. And I don’t intend to start now.”

She shoved me away, disgusted, and walked around the couch to the coffee table, naked and not giving a damn.

“Don’t forget your tape player,” she said. “My next listen is going to be on a high-end stereo system.”

I went over there to collect my property just as she ejected the tape from it. She took the cassette out and frowned at it.

“This is an Ampex tape,” she said, studying it, still frowning.

“So?”

“So it’s not the brand they use at my husband’s office. That’s Maxell.”

We looked at each other. My erection was history and her nakedness a non-issue.

“So it’s a copy,” I said.

Her sneering smile wasn’t sexy this time. “So much for your honest ex-governor.”

“I’m not so sure. It might be somebody else.”

She frowned. “Somebody else... who what?”

“Somebody else,” I said, “who has the original.”